


Friends In Low Places

by blue_rocket_frost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Drug Use, Fluff, Friendship, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/pseuds/blue_rocket_frost
Summary: “Hey, Mashkov,” Kent says, “who do I gotta blow to get a drink around here?”





	Friends In Low Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ProphetPrior](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProphetPrior/gifts).



> This fic contains a lot of alcohol and drug use. If that's not your thing, please read one of the many other fics from the KPBD that are more your style. 
> 
> Thanks to my amazing friend and beta, [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity), who tirelessly cheerleaded and completely unfucked this fic for me. Also thanks to the mods for putting on such a great fest. 
> 
> I hope my recipient likes it!

In 2016, Kent Parson wins his second Stanley Cup. It’s all ticker-tape and battle-worn jubilation, and he passes it to Jeff after he takes his lap. There’s champagne in the locker room, some remix Piggy put on there just for him, Miley Cyrus—we can’t stop, and we won’t stop. It’s so loud. 

A bunch of the boys head out to XS, windows down, bass bumping up the boulevard. Kent does a bump or two, too. It tastes like metal and snot in the back of his throat, but he’s screaming too much to care, then his mouth goes numb. He puts his whole arm out of the window. It feels like he’s flying. He’s never felt this good before. 

The club is packed, for a Tuesday, but it’s Vegas so Kent has an in. He’s Kent Parson, he’s twenty-five years old, and he just won the Stanley fucking Cup for the second time in three years. He always has an in. They get behind the velvet rope before Kent can finish smirking his signature smirk, following behind a line of dolled-up bottle girls who tower over him in their sky high heels. 

“You boys celebrating tonight?” the brunette asks him. She’s the prettiest one, probably, looks a little like Selena Gomez mixed with Christina Aguilera. 

“You could say that,” Kent says back. 

She smiles at him, sweet like warm honey. “What can I bring you?” 

Kent hands her his black card. “What have you got?” 

They split eight or nine or twelve or seventeen bottles of premium liquor. There’s body shots. Kent snorts another line off of Whitney’s thigh. Whitney’s the bottle girl. She’s twenty-two and majoring in pre-med and she thinks Kent Parson is the best active hockey player alive. Kent gets the whole team to sign a cocktail napkin for her and she almost cries. 

A dance mix of Beyonce is playing somewhere on the dance floor. Kent is really feeling it, he’s thinking about going down there, maybe asking Whitney to dance with him, just friendly-like, but then Jonah is making lines again, and someone out back gave Swoops a Stanley Cup discount on some molly. 

In the quiet of the bathroom, Kent’s nose starts to bleed. It’s fucked up, but it’s kind of beautiful, like his body is so full of joy and love that it has to leak out. His heart is racing a thousand miles a minute and he’s so high he feels like he has wings. He takes his phone out of his pocket. He’s got a million messages, maybe a million and three, social media is insane and everyone he’s ever met has called to congratulate him. 

Kent scrolls through his contacts, and calls. 

“Hello, Zimmermann’s phone. Ha ha, too slow, Zimboni, try again. No! Too small, can’t reach!” 

He doesn’t know who that is on the other end of the phone, but it’s not Jack. “Hey, is Zimms there? It’s me. I’m at this club and everything is really loud. I think this is what it feels like to be happy and I’m so fucking scared I’ll never feel this way again. Is this what you felt like before the draft? Is that why?” 

“Kenny?” It’s Jack. 

“Hiya, Zimms. I’m really fucked up.”

“Are you okay? Is someone with you?” 

“Yeah, the whole team. I’m great, Jack, I’m really good. I didn’t mean to call. Well, I did. I wanted to. I wasn’t supposed to, though. I’ve got you in my phone as ‘don’t text her bro’. I’m sorry I didn’t delete your number. I will. I really will next time.” 

“Jack, are you okay? What’s he say?” It’s the voice he doesn’t recognize.

“Zimms, do you have me on speaker? That’s kind of hilarious. You were always so private before. Anyway, I was just calling to say I was sorry. For calling you. And everything.” In the mirror, Kent’s smile is smear of blood over plush lips and white teeth. “I have to go, my shirt’s bleeding.”

* * *

Seventeen hours later, Kent wakes up half-naked in his bathtub with his cat curled up around his feet. The whole place smells so strongly of vomit and Clorox that he can’t even breathe.

“Hi baby,” he says, in his squeaky cat voice, even though it hurts like a motherfucker because his throat is raw. Kit crawls up his body, every step along his stomach sending another wave of nausea up his throat. “What are you doing down there, huh?” He swallows bile and scritches behind her ears. She meows superciliously. “Don’t judge, Daddy, okay, babe? Real men wake up in bathtubs sometimes.”

“Parse? Are you awake?” Swoops, all 6’3 of him, pokes his head tentatively around the door frame. He’s carrying, absurdly, a cat shaped salt shaker and a giant-ass slice of the watermelon Kent bought on the side of the road a day and a half before game seven. He makes himself comfy on the side of the tub.

“Swoops, my man,” Kent says. “How’s it feel to be a fucking Stanley Cup Champion?” Kent raises his hand for the most enthusiastic fist bump he can muster.

“Started from the bottom, now the whole team fuckin’ here,” Swoops says, and spits a watermelon seed onto Kent’s rug. Kent lets him get away with it, since the only way the place smells like Clorox is if someone put in some first line minutes cleaning up his vomit. “Blake Griffin finally followed me on twitter. So, you know, I’m feeling pretty good.” 

“Bro, that’s sweet.” Swoops spits another watermelon seed. Kit takes offense and jumps out of the tub to go clean herself and side-eye him outside of spitting distance. “Not as good as winning the Cup, though?” 

“Nah. Nothing’s as good as winning the Cup. You think he’ll recognize me next time we sit courtside?” 

“Yeah, maybe.” Kent sinks back against the skin warm marble. He’s exhausted, his whole body hurts, his head feels like it’s splitting apart. 

“Hey, Parse—Um, Kent?” 

“Yes, Anthony?” 

“Are you crying?”

He touches his face, his fingers come back wet. “Yeah. I think so. It’s probably because of the molly.” 

Swoops taps his temple with the salt shaker. “Or the coke? Or all the shots?” 

Kent shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I’m not a doctor.” He wipes his eyes. His eyelashes are all wet and gooped together. 

“Whatever. You scared the fuck out of Zimmermann. He had his goon squad call Jeff at two in the morning and we searched the whole fuckin club for you until we found you passed out in a pool of your own puke on the bathroom floor. You owe me six hundred dollars, by the way. I had to pay off some asshole who took a picture of you. Piggy broke his iPhone.”

“Peak Zimms.” Kent lets his head fall back and thunk against the wall of the shower. “He’s not exactly known for being like, hella rational. It’s why he dropped out of the draft.” 

Swoops throws his watermelon rind into Kent’s bathtub. “I thought he was a drug addict.” 

“He’s something.” Kent turns his face into Swoops’ thigh and wipes his eyes on borrowed sweatpants. “Remind me to delete his number later.” 

Swoops sits the salt shaker on Kent’s head.

* * *

Kent sticks around Vegas for the first part of the summer. He’s got locker clean out and exit interviews and a street hockey rink in Alphabet City that he has to dedicate on a random Tuesday when it’s 114 degrees. The NHL Awards are the next day.

He wears the suit his publicist talked him into down the carpet. It’s stiff and a little shiny, and grey because black was deemed too harsh for his coloring. Not like anyone’s paying attention to his suit when his hair won’t stay out of his fucking face and his watch cost half a million dollars, but it’s not a hill he’s willing to die on. He takes his mom as his date. He always takes his mom as his date. 

Kent sweeps the goddamn awards—Hart, Ross, Messier, Lindsay. Thanks his family and his coaches and everyone on this team. Name-drops Zimms and Bad Bob and his boys up in Rimouski. Congratulates Zimms for getting the Calder. It’s not even that surreal. It just feels kind of inevitable, like a high he knows he’s going to come down from. 

Alexei Mashkov—Zimms’ goon, the one who had called Jeff on him—loses the Lady Byng to Anze Kopitar. It’s fucked up that Mashkov’s nominated for the Lady Byng at all. For one thing, he’s a gritty shutdown defenseman and the Professional Hockey Writer’s Association doesn’t reward stay-at-home defenseman for shit. He’s also about as gentlemanly as Kent’s left nut. For another, the Lady Byng is a bullshit award that should be voted on by the refs and the linesman, because how the fuck does the PHWA know who’s gentlemanly or not? 

It’s driving Kent crazy, which is why he spends the uber ride to the afterparty googling Mashkov’s stats. He’s having a breakout year. Probably some kind of crazy chemistry with Zimms. “Fuck.” 

“Watch your goddamn mouth, Kenneth,” Mom says, out of the side of her perfectly painted mouth. 

“Mom, I swear to Christ, Kent is on my fucking birth certificate.” 

“I know, darling. I was there with a gaping wound from my navel to my asscrack.”

“MOM.” 

“KENNETH.” 

He presses his forehead against the cool glass even though he knows it’s going to leave a gross-ass oil smear. “I won four awards. Why are you being so mean to me?” 

Mom grabs his wrist. “Because I’m so fucking proud of you.” She pulls his head over to her chest, like she did when he was little. “And somebody needs to keep your feet on the ground.” 

The sequins on her dress scratch his face. She smells like Tiger Balm and Dad’s old aftershave, the one she kept around after he died to dab behind her ears when she misses him. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

She puts her fingers through his hair, like her magic touch can tame the cowlick that no hair product on earth has been able to conquer. “Promise me.” 

Kent sits up to look at her. Her eyes look wet in the neon lights. “Mom, what are you talking about?” 

“Kent, promise me.” 

“It’s fine, Mom, I promise. Everything’s fine.”

* * *

The after party is already buzzing when Kent gets there. The first thing he does is ditch his mom. She’s going to go find Bob and Alicia, and she and Kent are Not Going to Talk About It. Just like they didn’t talk about them having dinner last night, and they’re not going to talk about Kent going straight to the bar and ordering an Aunt Roberta with a plate of limes.

He’s not really in the mood to socialize, but that doesn’t stop God and everyone from coming up to him to say congratulations. He takes about a million selfies with weird Canadian rock stars and fans and assorted little brothers. Bob and Alicia stop by. They don’t say anything except congratulations. They stopped saying anything but congratulations and “will you come smile in a pink polo at my celebrity golf event” around the time Zimms dropped out of the draft.

Mashkov makes his way up to the bar when Kent has a lime wedge in his mouth. His suit is too tight across his shoulders and the strobe lights in the club show off the discoloration in his front three teeth. Kent wonders if they’re real. Mashkov doesn’t notice Kent for a minute. He just stands around ordering a drink: something top shelf, tequila-based with an umbrella in it. 

“You don’t look like a little umbrella kind of guy,” Kent says. 

Mashkov shrugs. “Is funny, big guy, little umbrella.” 

Kent downs his drink. “Hilarious.” He tilts his glass on its side and signals for another drink. “Why are you here, Mashkov?”

“I was nominated for award, I come to party, need to get drink.” 

“Look, I know you don’t like me. I don’t really get it, but I’m not like, mad, or anything. Haters keep me young.” 

Mashkov sips his drink through the little black cocktail straw. He’s not handsome, but there’s a white scar on his lip that scrunches up when he drinks, and his eyebrows are weird and make his face interesting. “Zimboni says I can’t not like you if I don’t know you.” 

The air in Kent’s lungs turns cold. “Sounds like Jack. Guy goes to college for a couple of years and thinks he knows everything.” 

“You scare us, the other night.” 

“Sorry, man. You know what it’s like, winning a Cup.” Kent grabs his drink from the bartender and takes a sip. It burns going down, but that’s kind of the point of an Aunt Roberta. “Actually, I guess you don’t. Anyway, I gotta go, but you can cut out the protective boyfriend routine. I deleted his number.” 

Mashkov’s hand curls around Kent’s arm when he turns to go. He squeezes, maybe more gently than he should. “I think that what he’s afraid of.”

* * *

Bad Bob Zimmermann’s charity golf tournament is in Pittsburgh. He always wears a yellow polo and all the kids he mentored who made the show come out and parade around like they owe him something. Maybe they do. Kent and Bob never had that kind thing going for them. He got a few hockey tips, went on a couple of ski vacations, but he was always too busy in Zimms’ orbit to feel any of Bad Bob’s gravitational pull. 

Kent sucks at golf, but it doesn’t really matter. He wears a white polo, keeps his hat facing forward, and flirts with the ladies he’s stuck with all afternoon for all he’s fucking worth. They’re pretty cute about it—they joke back, and no one pinches his ass or anything. It’s pretty good.

Afterward, they all have dinner and drinks in the clubhouse. Kent hangs towards the back against the wall and sips on his third mimosa while Jack makes cow eyes at some little blond. Mom said Jack was seeing someone. Jack’s always seeing someone. It’s always a little blond. It’s just usually a girl, and he usually doesn’t care if Kent comes around to suck his dick while they’re in the middle of it. Kent knows it’s different this time. He heads to the bar for another drink.

“What, no little umbrella?” Mashkov says by his ear. 

It takes a lot for Kent not to startle. He takes a breath before he turns to look. “Oh. It’s you again. Security? I have a stalker.” 

Mashkov taps his empty glass. “Maybe I just come for drink.”

“Maybe.” Across the room, Jack’s blond is watching them like hawk. “Hey, Mashkov, introduce me to Jack’s buddy over there.”

“I’m not sure is good idea.” 

Kent turns toward Mashkov with the full thousand watts of his flirtiest smile, leans in a little close. “Come on, what could it hurt?”

“In Russia, my dog has sweater that say ‘here comes trouble’. When I go home for World Cup camp I’m mail it to you.” 

“Your dog wears sweaters?” Kent’s nose wrinkles without his permission. He swirls his glass in hand. 

“Sister’s dog, mostly, but yes.” 

“My cat has a tiara.” 

Mashkov takes a big gulp of whatever in his glass. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

Kent leans against the bar. “So I’ve been told.” 

Eric Bittle has huge eyes and blond hair and he squeezes Kent’s hand too hard when he shakes it. “We’ve actually met before,” he says, “I played hockey with Jack in college. I was at that party.”

Of course, Kent thinks, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “Right, well, it’s nice to meet you again, then.”

“Oh, likewise. It’s so generous of you to donate your time and energy at this tournament for Jack’s dad—oh, sorry, gotta go! Jack’s calling.” 

“What’d I do to him?” Kent asks Mashkov, back at the bar, once he’s sure Bittle’s out of earshot. 

Mashkov’s glass is wrapped in his huge hand. He takes a long drink. “Exist, I think.” 

“Him and everybody else.”

* * *

“Do you really need to take three valium for a one-hour flight?” Swoops asks, and shoves his hands in his pockets. They’re at McCarran at four in the morning to head to Lake Tahoe for Jeff’s wedding. 

“What if there’s turbulence? You’re not gonna cuddle with me and hold my hand. You brought a date.” 

Swoops’ date is his girlfriend, Emily, who he’s been dating for six months. She’s a nursing student and a dealer at the Pussycat Lounge. “Aw, Parser,” she coos, “switch Tony seats. I’ll cuddle with you. I need the extra leg room, anyway.” Emily’s taller than Kent. She doesn’t like to let him forget it. 

“Damn, Em, the man has a family,” Swoops says, and wraps his arm around her neck, presses his mouth against her ear.

“Fuck you both. I’m going to get coffee.” 

Kent brings them all coffee and overpriced muffins, because he likes to remind people every now and then he’s a nice fucking guy. He sleeps against the cool window on the plane, then in the back of the rented Suburban with his ears covered while Swoops plays the greatest hits of like, Keith Urban from Emily’s phone. 

Approximately a zillion notifications pop up on his phone once he remembers to turn off airplane mode. Em’s tagged Kent in a picture of himself curled up in the back seat in an oversized Britney Spears hoodie from 2013 and tagged it #smolbean and #itsparsonbitch. It’s already got too many likes to track, and people are reposting it all over twitter. Kent turns his phone off. 

Jeff’s wedding goes off without a hitch. The rehearsal dinner is a little dicey, but Kent doesn’t remember most of it because of the wine. The wedding really is great, though. They have it outside, as the sun sets, overlooking the water. The weather is perfect, just cool enough that Kent’s not sweating through his three-piece suit. There are twinkle lights and everything. Swoops cries. 

Jeff and Katie have been together since Jeff came to the Aces. Katie started grad school at UNLV and refused to marry Jeff until she got her degree; she got her PhD at the end of the semester. Kent doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing in the reception when they walk in and the DJ announces, “Dr. Katherine and Mr. Tyler Jeffries.” 

The reception is inside the venue in a room with a lot of wood and a lot of windows. It's all gorgeous and well-done, and the first dances and the speeches are moving and hilarious. Everything is going swimmingly until Kent gets a little too much attention from the bridesmaids at the singles table and has to go hide at the bar. 

That’s when Alexei Mashkov shows up. 

“Jesus Christ,” Kent says, “are you stalking me?” He means it this time.

Mashkov looks down at him. “What? Is surprise?”

“Not really.” It’s not like Kent didn’t know Mashkov was here—he and Jeff were buddies back before Jeff got traded to the Aces. Kent just wasn’t prepared emotionally. Mashkov’s really tall. He’s wearing a suit. Kent takes a long, slow drink. 

“What you drinking? It smells like shit.” 

“Vodka water.” Kent looks down into his glass. “I don’t know. I think there’s some tequila in there, too. I told them to make it lethal.” 

Mashkov’s face contorts into something nastier than Kent’s ever seen it, even in his least proud moments on the ice. “In Russia, they hang you for offense against good vodka.” He passes his own glass over. “Drink this.” 

Kent eyes it for a minute. “Will it bite?” 

“A little, but you’ll like.” 

Kent drinks. Mashkov watches him swallow. 

“You like?”

“Yeah. What is it? It’s good.” Kent licks his lips. His mouth is suddenly a little dry. 

Mashkov grins at him. “Bartender only make for Russians. If you want, come find me. I’ll get for you.” 

The wedding party takes a couple pictures for Instagram, and Jeff pulls him aside and hugs him like he just scored eight game-winning goals. “Parser, man, I’m so fucking happy.”

“Bro, I’m happy for you.” 

“I want you to be happy.” 

“Okay. How drunk are you, Jeff?” 

Jeff wraps his arms tighter around him and bends so his mouth is so close to Kent’s ear there’s no way anyone else can hear them. “You could’ve brought a date. We love you. We wouldn’t mind.” 

“I’m not seeing anybody.”

“But you could, Parse. I saw you talking to Mash earlier—”

“Katie,” Kent yells, “come and get your husband before he’s too drunk to fuck!” 

“What’s with him tonight?” Swoops asks, when Katie comes, laughing, to pull Jeff away. “He asked Emily when I was going to propose. I thought she was gonna puke. What’d he say to you? You looked like your face was about to set fire.”

Kent runs his hands through his sweaty hair, and fucks up all the product that was holding down his cowlick. “I need a drink.”

* * *

Flagging down Mashkov is pretty easy. He’s one of the tallest guys in the room, and Kent floats toward him like he’s a beacon and tugs on his sleeve. “Hey, go do your Russian thing.” 

Mashkov is in the middle of talking to some bridesmaids, but he excuses himself, and gets up to leave. “Russian drinks better, yes?” 

“Any drinks better. Many drinks. All of the drinks.” 

“You sure you need drinks? I think you just need lie down, maybe go to sleep.” He gets Kent his drink. 

Kent takes it, downs half in a swallow. He takes a deep breath. “So, like,” Kent says, “are you trying to fuck me?” 

Mashkov’s glass clanks on the table where it drops. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I’m not saying I would or I wouldn’t—I mean, you’re really tall and you have a little bite to you and your body’s like—obviously. And maybe you are a little bit of a butterface, and we hardly know each other and then there’s Jack—” Kent finishes the rest of his drink, and then he blacks out a little. 

When Kent wakes up, he’s laying in his bed, still in his suit. Alexei Mashkov is taking off his shoes. “Good,” he says, “you awake. Now I’m not worry about whether is okay to take off your clothes.” 

Kent sits up, and holds out his arms like a child waiting to be undressed. “Help.” Kent doesn’t know where his jacket is, but Mashkov unbuttons his shirt. His hands are warm, with just enough pressure to feel them. They’re so big, they shouldn’t be able to be nimble on little buttons, no matter how much practice he’s had. 

“I’m sorry,” Kent says, “I lied before. You're not a butterface.”

“Parson, what we do with you, huh?” Mashkov touches Kent’s crooked face. 

Their faces are very close together. Kent moves in. All of Mashkov's features get closer until they blur together when their lips touch. It’s not much of a kiss, pretty sloppy: lips, tongue, a little teeth, Mashkov’s hand gripping at the back of Kent’s undershirt, Kent’s arms around Mashkov’s neck, pulling them closer together. 

“Stay with me,” Kent says, before he can help himself. 

Mashkov touches his face again. “Is better, I think,” he says, “if I go.”

Kent only pukes twice in the morning, but still spends a solid hour curled up in the empty bathtub. Swoops comes in to bring him a Gatorade and a plastic carton of dried cranberries courtesy of Em. 

“I kissed Alexei Mashkov last night,” Kent says, instead of a greeting.

Swoops climbs into the tub with him and tucks his knees up. “How’d that go?” 

“Terribly?” 

“I thought Mashkov hated you.” Swoops throws a cranberry at Kent’s head. 

Kent opens his mouth and catches it. “You don’t have to like someone to kiss them.”

Swoops eats a handful of cranberries. “That’s fair.”

* * *

Kent flies out to shoot a Bauer ad in Exeter three days later. He doesn’t really know what it’s for, but he takes a handful of valium and an eight-hour flight with his publicist and his agent that stops once in North Carolina. He drinks a large coffee in the Charlotte airport and takes a pouty selfie with planes taking off in the background for Instagram. It gets about a hundred thousand likes in ten minutes, and he scrolls through all the comments full of tagged friends and heart eyes. He only likes the ones from the guys. 

Bauer puts him up in a Hampton Inn out in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire. There’s nothing around but a Rite Aid and a Dunkin Donuts, so they eat chocolate cake donuts while they wait on their Chinese takeout. Kent likes his agent and his publicist. They’re young, single guys, like to party, know how to mind their business. No one says anything when he takes an Ambien and goes to bed at nine. 

Jack Zimmermann is at the shoot the next morning. “We thought you boys could play a little one-on-one,” the Bauer guy—John, or something—says, “since Parse is more of a dynamic stick handler and Jack here is more of a hard shot guy.” 

Kent doesn’t say anything about the force of Jack’s shot, but there are a lot of jokes he can make about well—come, mostly. He doesn’t think anyone here would appreciate them. 

“I assume the two of you know each other.” 

Biblically, Kent thinks. He grins and says, “Yeah, we’ve met.” 

Zimms smiles a weird little smile. “Once or twice.” 

“You boys ready to get in your gear?” 

He and Jack change into full pads and everything. It’s totally unnecessary, but it looks good for camera, Kent in all black and Jack in all blue.

“How’s your, you know—guy?” Kent says when he’s taping his socks up. He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s the first thing that pops into his mind. 

“He’s good.” Jack pulls the laces of his skates tight. “Everything’s good. How are you, Kenny?” 

Kent is a waning party balloon. “I’m sorry.” 

“I said he’s good, how are you?” 

“I’m great, Zimms. I’m doing great.” That’s not what he meant. 

The shoot goes fine. Kent dangles Zimms to hell and back, and Zimms checks him into the goalpost. 

“Oops,” he says, grinning. “Keep your eyes up, Parse. Puck Handling 101.” 

Kent gets his stick between Jack’s legs and takes the puck from him with a slick move and a dazzling little spinorama. “How do you know, Zimms? You gotta be able to get the puck to learn how to handle it.” He sinks it into the back of the net from the blueline. 

Jack laughs. “I want to be pissed at you.” 

“Go for it,” Kent says. “I’m used to it.” 

Jack’s mouth straightens out into a firm, familiar line. His mood seems to improve when they bring out the radar gun to track the speed of their slapshots. Zimms’ is over a hundred. Kent’s is about eighty-six.

“Come on, eighty-six. That’s not that bad. This stick has a like seventy-five flex.” 

Jack taps him on the helmet. “Eat more protein. Might grow a little, eh?” 

“Rude, Zimms. I’m telling your dad.” 

“Go ahead. He’ll just give you that recipe for the weird bulk shake with the tinned salmon he used to make us in juniors. Call him up, bud, you probably need it.” Jack leans on his stick. The flex barely gives. 

Kent’s heart drops to his stomach. “I don’t exactly have his number.” 

“I’ll get Tater to send it to you.” 

“What? I’m not—We’re not—He’s not even—” Kent can feel his face go hot, knows the blush is chasing down his neck and onto his chest. 

“I wasn’t even, either, until I met you.” 

“Is that supposed to be a compliment? It sounds like you mean for it to be a compliment, but you’re just saying I’m a fucking wrecking ball.” 

Jack sighs. “I’m saying—Tater’s a nice guy.” 

“I’ve never been great at nice.” 

On the other side of the rink, where the Bauer guys are setting the lights up, a boom mic drops and scatters across the ice. Jack bumps their shoulders. “You’re a lot better at it when you’re sober.”

* * *

Before World Cup training camp, Kent spends almost a solid week sunbathing naked on a boat with Alexei Mashkov and a metric shitton of alcohol. 

“Hey, don’t get my ass in your snapchat,” he says as Mashkov captures the sunset with his phone.

The boat is softly rocking, birds are flying overhead. At the edge of the horizon, the sky is orange and pink and blue, like some kind of cosmic mixed drink that would be better with a splash of lime.

“Hey, Mashkov,” Kent says, “who do I gotta blow to get a drink around here?”

Mashkov passes him the open bottle of champagne, and smiles.


End file.
